


your soft exhale sounds like a broken hallelujah

by cartoonmoomba



Series: I walked around the world until I found my gravestone [14]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: AU: the promised land, F/M, more tags to come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 20:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11321097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartoonmoomba/pseuds/cartoonmoomba
Summary: A Garlean boy and a girl who once heard the Forest. What could go wrong? [character drabbles]





	1. the first

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Final Fantasy XIV does not belong to me.
> 
> Playing through Stormblood brought back some ideas I had. 
> 
> [Tumblr tag](http://fheythfully.tumblr.com/tagged/au:-the-promised-land).

She is seven and he is eleven when they first meet.

It is the first time his father has decided to take him to this castrum bordering Eorzea, and Albert is beside himself with excitement. He presses his face against the window panes of the airship as they near a mighty forest and gradually descend and all Albert can think is:

He didn't know the world could be so green.

Inside, the soldiers fall in line as his father steps out and they salute as one. Behind his father Albert walks, casting about subtle glances and hiding his disappointment. The building is the same as all the others, metal and grey and somehow _hungry_ -looking. There is a sense of something in the air, a tension at being so close to the Eorzeans on the other side: the men talk louder and crack dirtier jokes. And past it all, in brief glimpses, Albert can see it: Eorzea. The land of magic and eikons and barbarian peoples who know not the destruction they threaten unto the star. He yearns to see it closer, run his fingers over the foreign trees and soil and breathe in that air of magic. He wants to feel _magic_.

He sneaks away when the staff and soldiers are too nervously busy catering to his father, and while the man himself is too busy catering to buorecaracy. He finds a narrow set of stairs, the width of which barely fit him, and winds his way down to the land below. His breath is caught in his chest: he turns the corners and all of a sudden it is there, stretched out before him. A charred strip of land which the castrum has used to mark their territory but beyond it - all the green, all the trees, all the flowers. In the setting twilight it looks like a fairytale.

Albert stands there and stares, his breath knocked out from his lungs, his eyes suddenly moist with tears. It is so beautiful and otherworldly that it overwhelms him, the boy whom for all his life has only known the grey and steel of the capital city.

There is a hint of movement from behind one of the trees. Before Albert can turn, before his heart can stutter once more in fright, a figure emerges from the shroud: small and fair skinned, with pale hair falling close to the ground behind it. _A fae?_ Albert thinks and fears, remembering the stories:  _do not venture close to the forests of the savages. The land is vast with strange, nefarious creatures who will happily steal you and burn you alive for your flesh_.

Behind the creature, a tail flicks out from one side to the other, and what Albert had thought to be hair decorations twitch atop its head and he realizes that they are ears, like a house cat's, like a _beast's_. He fears this creature who is so otherworldly and strange but he also cannot help but be drawn to it, this new thing, this curious thing.

"You do not belong here," the creature speaks in a girl's voice and its speech is Garlean. Albert starts, reels back and then leans in again. The voice is as clear as a bell but yet it stands too far for him to hear it, and what's more it speaks _Garlean_ \- this girl-creature, on the wrong side of the wall, too far for them to communicate.

He wants to yell at itto be heard, but no doubt the men in the castrum would hear him. So instead he opens his mouth and quietly says,

"You are a Garlean?"

He cannot clearly make out the creature's face but he thinks the way its tail moves is so similar to his house cat when it is frustrated. "Garlean?" The girl-voice comes again, and the creature's mouth is moving and the sound is nearly inside his head. "I am a Gridanian. You do not belong here. The Forest wishes you to leave."

"Magic," Albert breathes out as the realization comes to him. _Of course_ this is how they can speak with one another - he is in barbarian lands, staring at a barbarian creature! It must be employing magic on him. Oh, the thought makes him giddy with excitement. There is no room for fear anymore.

"Why ever should I leave?" He says to the girl-creature across from him. "We have conquered these lands, and what parts we have not yet, we certainly will. No forest of yours will get in our way."

There is that tail flicking again. Albert wishes he could see this creature's face clearly - certainly it could not be a girl, what with the ears and the tail? "The Forest is angry with you," it - she? - tells him. "You are an outsider, and your blood has killed many of ours. Leave, while the forest still spares you."

"The forest?" Albert questions, and then laughs. "If anything you should be the one to fear me, with the entire castrum behind me--"

He does not get to finish his boast for abruptly the ground beneath his feet turns soft and the air around him sharp, cutting at his throat and hands as his feet buckle below him.

"Leave," the creature tells him again, the voice soft (and years later when he remembers this moment, he will think, so soft and _empty_ ) in his ears and when the world around him rights itself again, he looks up and the creature has gone. The wind around him picks up speed, all that greenery he had been admiring earlier rustling beneath it like angry whispers.

Albert flees.


	2. the second

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr tag](http://fheythfully.tumblr.com/tagged/the-promised-land).
> 
> [Albert tag](http://fheythfully.tumblr.com/tagged/alberto).
> 
> [Lieal tag](http://fheythfully.tumblr.com/tagged/lieal).

She is nine and he is thirteen the second time they meet.

It is Albert's second visit to the castrum bordering Eorzea - his father is bringing him on a tour, in preparation for Albert's upcoming declaration into the hierarchy. The fortifications have grown since the last time he laid eyes upon the metal beast but it is still doable, for him, to sneak away in the midst of politics and meetings down the stairway he remembers well from the time before. He remembers the narrow width of it and the sharp turns until suddenly, coated in moonlight and starshine, the land swells before him in fairytale flowers and greens. The ground beneath his feet is solid, the air around him metal fresh and earth-worn heady.

Albert has come prepared, this time: he brings a small spyglass to his right eye and peers into the distance. He trails it over towering trees and blooming bushes, captivated by the sheer amount of life that lives on the other side of the castrum wall. His father has taken him to Othard, to the barbarians' once mighty city of Ala Mhigo, but there is nothing that quite compares to this forest.

_The Black Shroud_ , the barbarians call it.

It is only with the aid of the spyglass that he can spot the darkness shifting in the distance, the tell-tale sign of someone moving amongst the greenery. His heart jumps in his chest - his stomach churns - oh, he had hoped to see her again, but he didn't even dare imagine it - and the darkness reveals a small, pale figure seated on the forest bed, hands twisted in the roots of a large tree. He knows it to be no fey creature now: he has seen the Miqo'te among the Aan, with their beast like ears and tails and strange eyes and teeth.

The pale figure before him is nothing but a girl. A mysterious girl, one who employs magic to speak easily to him in his own tongue, but a girl none the less. Albert yearns to call out to her, wonders if their speech will work the same as before. Yet he is also anxious: there is little time now to engage in conversation with her, with the new patrol routes he knows circling the castrum.

Through his spyglass he sees her ears twitch back and her head rise, then turn in his direction. For a moment he is taken back by the sheer blue of her eyes, which even in this darkness glow with moonlight itself. They overshadow her face with their size, full lashed and staring straight into his.

Her mouth curls downward in a frown. "You were here once before," her voice once more speaks fluent Garlean straight into his ears. She sounds so young; looks so young, far younger than Albert himself and he asks himself: what is it about her, then, that scares him so?

"The Forest does not wish to have you here," she continues, brows furrowed over those large eyes of hers. Her hands, buried in the ground and roots of the tree she rests beside, glow dimly with the shine of magic.

Albert is lost to his fascination. "What are you doing?" He asks on his side of the border, spyglass dipping to stare at the spot. "It's magic, isn't it? Do it again!"

Her sigh echoes inside his skull. "I am healing the Forest from the sickness your kind has brought. I have no choice but to do it again, seeing as how _you will just not leave_."

The anger in her words startles him. The wind in his hair suddenly feels sharp and menacing. Albert pushes past his fear, eager for the sake of his curiosity.

"You can hear this forest?" He asks her, spyglass trained on her face again. "How? How does it all work? What do you mean, it's sick?"

The agitation on the girl's face is blatantly obvious. "You need to leave," she pushes at him and her voice is somehow changed, somehow younger and fitting to her small stature. Albert hadn't realized how wrong she sounded until just then. Her hair trails behind her in a blonde veil as she straightens to her feet, one hand clenched into a tight fist over her heart. "Please leave," she begs him and he is captivated by her eyes, by the blue of them and the fear there.

"Why?" He asks her. In the distance he can hear beasts of some sort howling. "Why are you so scared?"

Her small mouth trembles. "The Forest is not kind to those it does not like," she tells him and before he can answer her, she turns and disappears deeper into the foliage.

"Wait!" Albert calls out despite himself, one hand outstretched as if he can reach her - but not at this distance, and when he lowers the spyglass he is once again reminded of all the scorched land between them. Soon enough the castrum will be built to expand over it, he knows, and then he will not be able to visit this spot again. He will not be able to see the strange Miqo'te girl again.

The disappointment burns inside his chest. The breeze feels cold against his skin.

Albert casts one last longing look at the barbarians' Black Shroud, with its talking forest and pale faced girls, and rushes back up to the castrum.

.

.

They do not meet again for a long time after.


	3. the forest

When she is seven years old, she meets a very special boy. She does not know this yet, as young and beholden to the elementals as she is, but the boy on the other side of the Twelveswood watching her with wide, eager eyes - she will love him one day, with all that she is and _more_.

She will love him to ruin.

(She never knows this, really. Not even when it is too late.)

.

.

The elementals in her head tumble over one another, a waterfall of whispering desires she has long since grown used to. The moon is high in the sky as she walks the Twelveswood, her small figure aglow in the light of it. Someone as young as she should not be out in the dark of the woods at this time of night, but her mother and the guards have long ago given up on keeping her within the confines of her home. The elementals’ will is strong within her, to the point where she does not speak to those around her - and on the rare occasion when she does, she does not know how. Words tumble out of her mouth awkwardly and unfamiliar, the motions of her tongue and the framing of her lips so foreign when compared to the flowing currents of hers and the elementals’ thoughts. In her silence, she speaks to the spirits making her body their sanctuary: _where,_ she asks them. _How?_ Occasionally as well. And always:

_Of course._

The walk to the eastern border is a known one to her by the time she is six summers old and capable of making the trek without growing exhausted. She does, of course - her mortal body is paper thin and bones as fine as glass, but she does not know this. She does not know that when the sharp thorns of bushes pierce her skin to the point of bleeding, it is meant to hurt. That she is meant to cry. That when her feet grow numb and her breath difficult, it is a call for reprise. Her body begs her: _stop, stop, stop. We are not made for this._

The voices say otherwise.

She heeds them.

All she knows of the world, after all, are the elementals and the downturn of her mother’s mouth and the conjurers guild in their damp caves, envious for the connection she has to their gods.

( _They would not be so jealous,_ she thinks years later, in the absolute silence of her mind, _if they knew of the way their gods swallow you whole and_ drown _._ )

.

.

The Forest does not like the eastern border, where an ugly, cold building is in the process of being built. She does not know of its significance, or even the word _castrum_. She is barely familiar with _Garlean_ \- a term thrown around in harsh overtones in Gridania, with such hate that makes her shiver and want to flee to the nearest grove. The Forest is in a similar mood the closer she gets to her destination, the pulsing in her head growing wrathful when she first glimpses it in-between the tree trunks. The Forest seethes: her body burns under their rage, their force pushing her to her knees before a sick oak. She does not think, at this point - she _does_. Her hands bury themselves in the soil of the roots and she closes her eyes and focuses not on the screaming in her brain but the noise of the woods around her, the cold sting of air against her bare skin, the life pulsating around her fingertips—

A disturbance is in the air. The Forest shifts to it, her attention with them. She rises and peers around the large trunk, towards where the castrum’s lights glow like the eyes of a hungry fiend. A small figure stands in the shadows of a stairwell, nearly invisible if not for the gleam of his eyes under the bright moonlight.

 _A boy,_ Lieal notes with detached curiosity, before the Forest takes over and moves her body for her.

“You do not belong here,” the angry spirits speak in her voice, straining her vocal chords with their fury and constricting her throat with how they tremble. Oh, how they want to reach out and rip him apart, send him to his death amidst the greenery he and his kind have destroyed. But, they cannot - their presence does not stretch far enough to wrench him off his feet and towards the void. How they wish it would.

She does not expect to hear his voice inside her head, overcoming the distance between them, but— _but_. It is difficult to think as herself at this point. Not right now. She is not herself. Her thoughts muddle their way through the cacophony of anger. It is not worth the fight. She does not _want_ to fight. She can just… be. A spectator to her own words, her own actions; a plaything of the elementals, willing to bend this way and that at their command.

Her mouth is moving. The Forest says: “You are an outsider, and your blood has killed many of ours. Leave, while the Forest still spares you.”

He does not. He mocks her words and – _oh_ , she blinks, feeling as if she is emerging from a dream. They do not like it, for they strain and fight to get at him with teeth and claw until the earth below him sinks and the air cuts at his body.

She watches him fall, a cry of surprise on his lips. The elementals jeer and demand his blood. She knows they are not capable of more, not from where she stands with a chasm burned into the soil between her and the outside world of the Empire.

She is not at an age yet where she knows what empathy is, so she turns and walks away from him, towards the darkness of the forest. It welcomes her gladly and she wonders what the strange feeling in her chest is. It unsettles her stomach, as if she had just eaten something to make her ill; her hands, she finds, are clammy beneath the thick layer of dirt on them. Her heart feels like it has been dragged down by the current of a forceful river.

The voices do not let her continue her train of thought. They do not let her _exist_ , and she crouches to her knees and resumes healing.

( _Drowning_ , she murmurs to Albert over a decade later _. Something so ancient and powerful cares not for the ones they command. They just take you and drown until you are nothing but a doll for their command_.)

.

.

Forgiveness, she finds, does not come – not even when it is too late.

Nothing comes when it is too late, but also - everything at once. 


End file.
